New Hot Shots Golf Characters

Hey kids, Chris here again, coming in to roll out the red carpet for two very stylish new addition to the Hot Shots family… Gloria and Alex.

You might have been hearing some news around the interwebs on pricing, availability and player level – but lets make it official:

Each character will be available for purchase over the PSN at .99 USD.

Alex skill level will be intermediate; Gloria’s is expert.

Both characters will be available to purchase on the 15th.

Now, in previous posts there have been some comments of the content being on the disc and needing a key to unlock it, so let me go ahead and clear that up for you: all the content on the physical disc can be accessed without additional purchases – it’s that simple. The “core” or “shell” of the on-disc game has a sort of plug-and-play feature that lets us quickly deliver content (such as characters and new courses) without clogging up your pipes, which also makes it easier for you to purchase the new content from the PlayStation Store (once you decide to) and access it right away. So if you’re tired of getting schooled by some young punk – you can quickly gain access to one of the more advanced players and unleash your mighty golf wrath upon them.

Everyone, regardless of buying new content or not, will be required to download the new patch. It just keeps the game running smoothly… some wonky things start to happen online players are running different version of the game.

Yay “hold back from the game so we can charge for it later” DLC! This new stratgey is going to drive a lot of consumers away from gaming.
Not that I don’t appreciate new content being made for a game post release, but a lot of the times (like now), it feels like things get purposely left out just to be sold to the consumer later to sneak a few exta dollars from them. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how it feels.

Boourns to this. Micro transactions are one of the sins of this generation. Perhaps if you bundled in a character with a new course that might work. Say a new course is worth $9 in the developers eyes, just tack on the character and make it $10. We wouldn’t know the difference.

Chris, thanks for trying to clear that up. Though it still sounds confusing (not on the disc, but not downloaded to the hard drive?). Anyway, glad to hear they’re only 99 cents each. VERY reasonable, people. No need to complain. When will the new course be available? I hope it also has a reasonable price (you can complain if it’s close to the Japanese price).

And what about longer text entries and voice chat? And maybe adding friends and blocking/muting people from the leaderboard screen, jumping tourneys from any floor, tracking of match play wins/losses, etc. I’m a loyal HSG fan and a G1 player with well over 200 rounds. I hope more tweaks and free online updates are on the way. The online experience is fun but could be truly dynamite!

Heya JEdwards – to clarify, the content is NOT on the disc, it will be automatically downloaded to the HDD with the rest of this Thursday\’s updates. We\’ve bundled all the updates into one package that way you\’re not forced to do another download once you decide to purchase the DLC.

Voice chat is still being figured out – and thank you for your feedback on the other features!

What sort of problems are you experiencing? Please visit the Hot Shots Golf forums and put up a post – I\’m sure some of the Hot Shots Fans can lend a hand in figuring this out, and if not, we can point one of our guys to take a look as well.

I really don’t care for added stuff after a game is released. Rock Band for example has so many dowloadable song’s they need to make another Disk SOON. And all for these patches for games becouse they don’t work correctly. Totally lame!!!! Gas is $3.95 where I live and I would rather save my money.

I don’t quite understand what the whining is all about. There are already ample characters to mess around with. If you don’t *absolutely need* these two, don’t get them. Pure and simple. I personally don’t have any interest in these two, but if any others are released I may take them into consideration. Same story with *any* DLC- if you don’t want it, don’t get it. Hot Shots Golf: OoB is very clearly a solid and completed title. As such, these two characters are just icing on the very goofy cake that is Hot Shots Golf.

I’ll repeat that in short: if you don’t want it, don’t get it. In this case, you *really* don’t need it (by the way -Jeff-, any word on the blog formatting options? I really prefer to use italics for emphasis rather than *stars* ).

Thank you all for your efforts. I look forward to everything you will be offering in the future. (Hot Shots Tennis…? :D )

Hey, that brunette looks like the girl who’s on the menu screen… anyway, I’ll be picking these up for sure at some point, though I may wait until I unlock the other golfers. GTA really sidetracked my gaming in a big way.

Any news on new courses would be appreciated too. Love the game, Chris.

This is just milking the product. It’s not very classy but on the other hand you don’t have to buy it. It does feel though that you purchased an incompleet product. It would have been better to give these karacters away to extend the lifespan of the product as they are doing with Burnout Paradise.

You see, I commend Chris for coming out here and posting these great entries the way he does. Plus the fact you reply to both, positive AND negative comments rather than delete the negative ones or whatever to make your post look “happier”.
I don’t know for others, but even though I have always been a HSG fan, I was hesitating on buying OoB because I had already spent too much getting myself other games lately. However, after reading through your entries here on PSBlog I decided it was just well-worth those extra bucks I had been saving around. Good job! I’m looking forward to unlocking all the features and playing Online with everyone!

Chris, thanks for your replies and your time! Two more questions about online:

1. Why isn’t there ANY information about ranking up online (on the official website, on the “Information Site”, or when you enter the online mode)? It’s not very intuitive at all. Everything I know came from people who’ve played the JP version and figured it out.

2. Why aren’t there small prizes (including random participation ones for those finishing outside the podium) for GF tourneys? And how about special tournaments? I think JP has these now and again. Anything we can do to encourage new players to come back to the online mode is important. Please consider some way to give small rewards to those starting out and maybe struggling. This is not an FPS; we welcome newbies and want them to stick around. Thanks for listening!

oh….the Europe thing is a good point since we obviously share servers, but according to this guy if you get the update you’ll be good, maybe you’ll be able to buy the characters soon (doesn’t seem fair but it seems like that will be the situation)

A U.S. demo would prolly generate a few thousand more sales and with a game that MAX I’ve seen 500 people online at one time and that was before GTA – that would REALLY help the longevity of this AWESOME game.

Also, bring it all down the pipe now!! Courses!!! Extra-characters!!! Play modes!!

New characters for this great game are a very welcome addition and at 99 cents, they should be an instant buy for any true HSG fan. Even discounting the differences in gameplay added characters will bring, the new art and voice work adds some nice variety to the game. Now bring on some new courses…

leetfoo and others, there is a LOT of content included with the game. There is no need for these extra characters. We’re not talking about PAIN with its bare minimum included characters thing here, we’re talking about having almost 20 included characters and now there’s two more for the people who want them.

The game plays very well and for all the people who haven’t tried it, go buy it or at least rent it and try it, its an incredibly good game, you won’t be disappointed.

@moshakirby the game really does look like that. The replays of shots really DO look that good. The live play really DOES look that good. The special effects when shooting really ARE that cool. There’s nothing fake about those shots, trust me, I play it regularly. Stop with the FUD.

Oh, and why is there no demo in the US store? The game is incredibly solid- it would only help sales, and the demo obviously does exist. Granted, arriving so late to the show you’d get plenty of flack, but it won’t do any REAL damage- only more sales.

I’ve heard so much criticism about this game, and how its “childish” and “kiddy”. Please, don’t talk, or use up valuable oxygen, until you actually play this game. I’ve been playing EA Sports’ golf games since PGA Tour on Genesis, Microsoft’s Links series, and the Hot Shots series since its inception. Without a doubt, I feel that HSG:OOB is easily the best “golf” game out there. The game physics are unparalleled; the level of balance that the lie system brings to the table punishes you for arrant shots, but thanks to amazing course design – rewards you for taking risks. This game is deeper than meets the eye.

On DLC; the patch system for the game brings all the game data down to your system so all you have to do is “unlock” the character via the Playstation Store. This isn’t Need For Speed: Most Wanted where you’re paying $9.99 for an unlock code to play with all the game’s cars or car parts from the start. This isn’t a pay-for-cheat-code game. Also, .99c for the downloads?! That’s insanely cheaper than our Minna No Golf 5 friends in Japan paid, roughly 1/5th of the price actually. Be thankful, not ungrateful.

My only questions – Can folks like yourself, Chris, post release notes about the patches? I’d love to know when we’d be getting the ability to see other peoples high scores in the online lobby – like currently available in Japan. Also, is there a timetable on the release of the “Oceania” course? A Price?